Staff Appraisal Report: Haiti Forestry Project (Report No. 3776a-HA)
Summary: World Bank staff appraisal of a Haiti forestry project, May 1982, with the era's baseline on forest cover, land use and fuelwood demand.
Key Findings
- Forest lands were put at about 930,000 ha, roughly a third of the land area, which is the baseline against which later deforestation estimates are read.
- Some 226,000 ha were judged suitable for irrigation while only 66,000 ha were irrigated, mostly from surface water.
- Petroleum consumption had grown 10.6 percent a year since 1973, which is the pressure behind fuelwood demand.
- The population was close to 5 million in 1980, about a quarter urban, with 750,000 in Port-au-Prince.
Full Description
The World Bank staff appraisal report for a Haiti forestry project, Report No. 3776a-HA, dated 12 May 1982. Beyond the project itself, its sector chapters are an early quantitative baseline: land area and its division between forest, cultivated and other uses, irrigation potential against irrigated area, and the energy sector's dependence on wood and charcoal. That makes it a reference point for measuring long-run deforestation, since later estimates of forest cover are usually compared with figures from this period.
How to cite
World Bank, 1982, Staff Appraisal Report: Haiti Forestry Project (Report No. 3776a-HA), accessed via HaitiDocs, https://www.haitidocs.org/doc/wb-1982-forestry-project-staff-appraisal